The 26 coolest women in UK tech

The UK technology industry has plenty of women in leading roles. It’s still a male dominated arena, though, so we’ve collected some of the UK’s most interesting women in tech, ranging from VCs, to startup founders.

Many of the people on this list have inested in innovate companies, both in the UK and abroad. Others are building those companies themselves.

With additional reporting by Oscar Williams-Grut, Lara O’Reilly, Will Heilpern, and Max Slater-Robins.

26. Martha, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho

Lane Fox launched online travel site Lastminute.com in 1998 during the dotcom bubble. It was one of the few businesses to survive the crash, going on to be purchased for £577 million in 2005. She entered the House of Lords in 2013, becoming its youngest female member.

24. Legacy Russell of Artsy

Legacy Russell works for Artsy, which is an online platform that aims to provide a way for people to discover art they will like, featuring work from leading galleries, museums, and private collections around the world.

Before joining Google Ventures, Larizadeh Duggan was the cofounder of fashion retail startup Boticca. She also held product management roles at Skype and eBay in addition to being an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Accel Partners.

20. Sarah Drinkwater of Google Campus

Google

Sarah Drinkwater works for Google as head of Campus London, a seven-storey space operated by Google for entrepreneurs near Old Street Roundabout.

Since its inception just over three years ago, Campus has developed a community of 45,000 people. It aims to provide open access education, mentorship, working space and events that are of interest to the startup community.

In 2015, Drinkwater became a mentor to Girls in Tech London, which aims to help talented young women learn skills for tech roles.

19. Sonali De Rycker of Accel Partners

Accel Ventures

Accel Partners is one of London's most respected venture capital firms, with a strong stable of tech talent. And de Rycker is one of Europe's most experienced capitalists, having worked for over 14 years investing in startups.

In recent years De Rycker has overseen investments in big-name European startup successes such as Spotify, Moo, Seatwave and Wonga. She was previously an independent director on the board of IAC. Starting her career as an Analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., she went on to join Atlas Ventures in 2000.

18. Elizabeth Varley of TechHub

TechHub

Elizabeth Varley founded TechHub in 2010 after realising that London was lacking in shared workspaces for tech companies. TechHub was one of the first hubs for tech startups in London, situating itself around the Old Street area. In 2012 it opened up office space in Google Campus, a larger workspace for internet startups sponsored by Google.

In February 2015 it was announced that TechHub will expand its partnership with Google into three new locations: India, Latvia, and Romania. TechHub members in those countries now have access to Google for Entrepreneurs services.

17. Sherry Coutu of The Scale-Up Institute

Scaleup Institute

Sherry Coutu is an entrepreneur turned angel investor who's keen to promote and support the UK's fastest-growing technology companies.

In 2015 Coutu launched The Scale-Up Institute with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman. Backed by Google, the Business Growth Fund, the London Stock Exchange and several advisory firms, the organisation aims to provide promising startups with advice on leadership, export markets and raising finance alongside, access to a network of advisors.

16. Alexandra Chong of Lulu

OnLulu.com

Alexandra Chong is the founder of Lulu, the app that lets women review and rate the men they date. She started the company in London in 2010. The site launched with $1 million in investment from VC firms Passion Capital and PROfounders Capital. But it changed focus in 2013 to expand to the US and embrace the college culture there that had helped Tinder grow.

15. Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet MBE

Larry Busacca/ Getty Images

Natalie Massenet founded online fashion portal Net-a-Porter in 2000 when she was trying to find designer goods for a fashion shoot. The site sells clothes using a layout similar to traditional fashion magazines.

Before starting Net-a-Porter, Massenet worked as a fashion model in Tokyo, assistant at Tatler, fashion stylist, and also worked with photographer Mario Testino. She's Chairman of the British Fashion Council, and received an MBE in 2009 for services to the fashion industry.

Shields previously worked as a managing director for Google in Europe, ran Bebo, worked at AOL, and was then recruited by Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg to run Facebook in Europe. She was also the CEO of Tech City UK.

12. Emily Brooke of Blaze

Emily Brooke is the founder and CEO of Blaze, a London startup that has built a laser bike light that can help save cyclists lives.

Blaze's 'Laserlight' is designed to improve rider safety by projecting a green laser image five to six metres in front of the cyclist, thereby making them more visible to drivers, pedestrians, and other cyclists.

Brooke, who took part in the first ever Entrepreneur First startup building programme, scored a major win for Blaze in December when it was announced that Santander planned to fit every 'Boris bike' in London with a Blaze Laserlight. The deal is said to be worth close to £1 million.

10. Kate Unsworth of Vinaya

Vinaya

Kate Unsworth is the CEO and cofounder of Vinaya (formerly Kovert Designs), a London-based fashion startup that makes connected jewellery, including rings and necklaces that buzz when you receive a WhatsApp message or email, for example.

9. Former Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti

Shami Chakrabarti is a giant of British civil society. For more than ten years until earlier this year, she was the director of Liberty, an 82-year-old London human rights organisation.

Liberty's remit extends well beyond the tech sphere -- but in the years since Edward Snowden's revelations about Western governments' surveillance, Liberty has championed digital rights just as it has traditional civil liberties.

A former Home Office barrister, she has honourary degrees from Southampon, Glamorgan, and Middlesex universities, and is the chancellor at the University of Essex. She was even a flag-bearer at the 2012 Olympics in London.

Having served as Liberty's director since 2003, she announced in January 2016 she her departure, with her post taken over by Matha Spurrier. Chakrabarti is now leading an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

8. Leanne Kemp of Everledger

Everledger is a startup that wants to make diamond theft a thing of the past.

It uses the blockchain -- the ledger of all bitcoin transactions -- to make a public record that valuable diamonds can be registered to, recording their unique characteristics. This should make it harder to pawn stolen diamonds, and help cut down on fraud.

The company was created by the Australian Leanne Kemp in 2015, and took part in the Barclays Techstars accelerator in June.

Nearly 900,000 diamonds have been registered to Everledger's platform already, and another 900,000 are queued up. Later down the line, it intends to start registering other luxury goods.

7. YouTube star Zoella

Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images

Zoella is the well-known British YouTube vlogger who shares updates about fashion, make-up, and her life. Earlier in February 2016 it was announced that she has reached 10 million YouTube subscribers, and her videos have been watched over 1 billion times.

Mendelsohn was given a CBE in the Queen's birthday honours list in June for her work in creative industries. Aside from her work at Facebook, she's also co-chair of the Creative Industries Council, a joint forum between the creative industry and the UK government.

Mendelsohn joined Facebook in July 2013, having previously served as executive chairman of advertising agency Karamarama. She spent 20 years working for advertising agencies before making the move to the social-networking giant.

5. Claire Valoti of Snapchat

She works as Snapchat's general manager of UK sales, overseeing the company's first office outside the US. The company has made a series of hires for its European team from rival digital media and tech businesses over the past year.

Unruly specialises in serving and analysing video advertising and brand videos that appear outside the confines of YouTube and Facebook. Its technology allows marketers to buy 'native' video ad formats using automated technologies and track their performance across social. The company also offers an analytics tool that predicts whether videos are likely to viral.

2. Julie Adenuga of Beats 1

The tech world was abruptly introduced to 27-year-old Londoner Julie Adenuga in June 2015, when she was announced as one of three global presenters for Beats 1.

Along with veteran BBC radio DJ Zane Lowe and New Yorker Ebro Darden, Adenuga is the face of Apple's flagship new internet radio station -- broadcasting from her London studio.

She may be a new face to techies, but she has strong roots in London's music scene. In 2010, she joined the city's underground radio station Rinse FM. 'We had no DJ experience, but we just played the music and were talking rubbish,' she said. 'It worked. Luckily.'

And let's not forget her family: Alongside Julie, there's also Joseph and Jamie Adenuga -- better known as London grime artists Skepta and JME.

1. Eileen Burbidge MBE of Passion Capital

Eileen Burbidge

Eileen Burbidge founded investment fund Passion Capital in 2011 with Stefan Glaenzer and Robert Dighero. Since then, Passion Capital has invested in a series of successful London companies including DueDil, GoCardless, GoSquared, and Smarkets.

But the biggest news of 2015 for Burbidge was when she took the job of Chair of Tech City UK, the organisation that works to promote the UK's tech startups, in September. She's the new public figurehead for the organisation.